This December LAM is under (and around and in) water. The feature well is saturated with new ideas about designing with and through water. The Port of Baltimore is open to designing with its dredge materials and has green-lit a pilot project for Mahan Rykiel’s sustainable and social enhancement of the Chesapeake’s Hart-Miller Island. Along the lakeshore, Chicago’s Navy Pier is putting aside its tourist-magnet past, with a redesign by James Corner Field Operations that now attracts native Chicagoans and visitors alike. And a handful of local efforts aim to combat the persistent encroachment of sea-level rise in the vulnerable communities surrounding Hampton Roads, Virginia, one of the most important strategic sites in the United States.

In Water, the EPA’s Campus RainWorks Challenge draws out creative solutions from landscape architecture students for treating and managing stormwater. Four landscape architects discuss the benefits and challenges of working in multidisciplinary firms inOffice. In Materials, a quirky relic of an industrial past gets a glittery makeover for a Seattle park. And this year’sLandslide campaign from the Cultural Landscape Foundation calls attention to public landscapes and national monuments in immediate danger of erasure. All this plus our regular Books, Now, and Goods columns. The full table of contents for December can be found here.